It's Hard To Say Goodbye
by Vivid Escapist
Summary: Before the Doctor could go brood up on his cloud in the sky, there was one last thing he had to do. Post ATM.


It was a cloudy day when the Doctor came. I was out working in the garden, fiddling with tomatoes and rose bushes, not so much because they needed it, but because I didn't have much else to do. Rory's mum had died years ago and I retired soon after. As much as I liked to insist I wasn't succumbing to the senior lifestyle, my days rarely consisted of more than plants, daytime telly and the bi-monthly neighborhood bingo matches (which I excelled at, by the way). The highlight of my life was really whenever Rory and Amy would pop home, bringing stories of aliens, robots, sea monsters and planets most people could only dream of. You could say I was living vicariously through them, but it also felt good to see my son doing something so remarkable with his life—no matter how modestly Rory spoke of their adventures. (I remembered very clearly the day I went with them on the dinosaur spaceship; more often than not, those three were saving the world and we all knew it.)

Not too long after the cube invasion Amy and Rory were gone for a greater amount of time than I'd ever been aware of before. I tried not to let worry get to me, but as noble as my son's conquests were, they were also the most dangerous I could imagine. Any planet in any solar system within any number of galaxies on any date in time. The list of things that could happen was infinite.

When I saw that bizarre blue box materializing on my front lawn I dropped the garden tools, brushed off my hands and bee-lined straight towards it. After a few moments the Doctor stepped out. He looked at me. I looked at him, and waited. Amy and Rory didn't follow. Maybe they were already home? The Doctor _could_ be giving me a personal visit, I supposed. Strange, but not impossible.

"Good afternoon, Doctor." He nodded.

"Likewise, Brian." It became apparent to me very quickly that the Doctor was sad; terribly sad. His face said it, his voice said it. The man's signature bow tie—of which I had never witnessed absent from his neck—was gone. Hiss clothes looked different too. I peaked behind him at the TARDIS.

"Are Rory and Amy with you?" His eyes flickered.

"No."

"Oh. Home then? Are they taking another travelling break?" The Doctor ringed his hands together, and slouched a bit. A car driving by honked its horn but neither of us gave it a glance.

"Brian, I need to talk to you."

"Okay…" I said uneasily. So this definitely wasn't a leisure trip then. He scanned the area briefly.

"Inside would be preferable." He tapped the blue box. "I don't think your neighbors would mind too much if I left this here?"

"Your TARDIS? Anyone will probably just assume it's _this_ daft, old man," I answered, pointing to myself, "with a new garden decoration." I laughed, but the Doctor remained completely still, completely serious. It was unnerving. "Um, come on in then. I'll start some tea."

We sat on the sofa in my living room, the Doctor sipping his drink silently. Each passing minute fueled my nervousness. Why wouldn't he just spit it out? Whatever he needed to say, it had to be bad. I knew that. But I had always been the rip-off-the-Band-Aid type, so this waiting was much less preferable.

"Doctor, where is Rory? Where's Amy? Why aren't they with you?" He stirred his tea around with the spoon. His eyes slowly met mine, then focused on the floor. A pit in the bottom of my stomach started eating away.

"I'm very, very sorry. I did everything I could. And if there was any way to change it—_any way at all—_I would but I can't and I'm sorry."

"Doctor, change what? What's going on?" I placed my cup on the short table between us, and the Doctor did the same. I saw him take a deep breath, and then he looked at me.

"Brian, Amy and Rory aren't coming home. They're gone." A sharp stab went through my chest. No, that couldn't me right. Absolutely not.

"What do you mean, _gone?_ Are they dead? They can't be dead. I just saw them…" I paused to think. It'd been a while—a couple months maybe—but that didn't mean they were _dead._ I had to be mistaken. "Doctor, tell me they're not dead."

"Right now, they are. Yes." I felt my heart rate speed up, each beat louder and louder to my own ears.

"What do you mean 'right now?' Are they or are they not?" I tried to keep my voice as even and calm as possible. Judging by the prickles of tears in the Doctor's eyes, I wasn't the only one hurting in this situation. But all logic was quickly flying out the window.

"There are these creatures—Weeping Angels they're called—and we encountered them in New York. As a way of killing you, the Weeping Angels send you back in time. One touched Rory, and then Amy. They were sent back to 1938 and they're…" He hesitated. "They're dead now. I'm sorry."

"If they got sent back to 1938, then why can't you just go get them in your TARDIS? It can go anywhere, right? Go to 1938!"

"I can't. It's not that easy, believe me. If I could go get them I would have already done it and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"Why can't you?"

"It's complicated."

"Then explain." I was not in the mood to be patronized. If the Doctor had a good explanation for why he was leaving his two companions—_my _son and daughter-in-law—in America seventy-four years ago, then I wanted to hear it.

"The angels have already messed with time too much there; it's too fragile. If I landed the TARDIS and tried to get Amy and Rory, the paradoxes would pull the universe apart."

"Then why couldn't you just land the next year? There has to be a way." The Doctor shook his head sadly.

"They created a fixed point in time. I can't change it. No one can. They're gone, Brian. I wish I could do something. You have no idea how much I want to make everything better. But I _can't._" A bomb could have gone off outside at that moment and I wouldn't have noticed. Everything was surreal. I was never going to see my son again. I was never going to see Amy again. All that life left in them, and it was all gone. They were so young. In this year, anyway. I could feel my emotions falling fast.

"If you don't mind, Doctor, I need some time alone." He nodded, but didn't say anything. A few moments later I heard the sound of the door closing, and the TARDIS leaving my garden. The next day I listened for the sound of the Doctor's arrival, hoping he would come back with news that he had been wrong, that Rory and Amy could be saved after all. I listened every day that week, and several weeks following. He never came again.


End file.
